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Correct, but irrelevant.
Correct, but irrelevant.
The only relevant question is 'did the shooter satisfy the conditions for self defence?' this seems very marginal. The fact alone that the officer fired through a side window while not in imminent danger is going to make things extremely difficult for him if this ever goes to court.
The Charlottesville car guy got 4 life sentences because of his attitude and motivation towards the protest beforehand.
Are you calling for him to be pardoned and compensated by the state for his unjust incarceration?
There is no relationship between these two cases.
At the very start, I saw reports or comments that the Charlottesville guy had been caught in a crowd of protesters, was trying to get clear, and accidentally ran into people. That seems to be not the case, but there's also some element (I think) of genuinely panicking and trying to get away which resulted in unintended harm. Or at the very least, he wasn't mentally all there. That makes no difference to the narrative around the entire affair, though.
What struck me most about the difference in coverage was the way the Waukesha Christmas parade car-ramming was reported. In that, at first it was all "a car ran into people" as though it were the vehicle deciding to do it, and no human agency was involved at all.
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Aside from the question how how threatening it is to drive towards someone in a car, and if your explicitly antagonistic motivation in going to a protest matters when determining guilt.
Glassnoser is around this thread arguing that lightly hitting someone with a car is no big deal. I wonder if he would think the same about bumping into a morbidly obese smoker who then has a heart attack? Or if he would blame her for putting herself in front of a car?
Saying there's no relationship is just silly. There's plenty to compare and contrast, to tease out the differences and separate reason from who/whom.
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no, the fact that a person doesn't have a right to flee from police means the woman is the initial user of unlawful force which is an element of self-defense
no, the first shot went through the windshield of a 3 shot sequence within roughly 1 second time frame which you can clearly see in the video (the glass fragments shoot up in front of the vehicle from the bullet hitting the windshield)
not that this is dispositive; a person who uses lethal force doesn't actually have to, within 1 second time frame from the point at which the cop was hit by the vehicle, realize the threat of great bodily harm or death is over (and that he wont be dragged alongside the vehicle or slip on the ice and fall under it) in order to use lethal force even if the biological lag of reality means the shots go through the side window
even if you think the above is not true and he didn't shoot through the windshield (which I would bet a significant amount of money that at least one shot went through the windshield) and he gunned the lady down as she drove by, lethal self-defense can be used in the defense of others, e.g., against a felon fleeing after committing aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (her car) driving recklessly thus putting everyone else on that street in danger including other law enforcement
and this isn't going to court because even if some unethical scumbag state prosecutor attempted to bring charges it would be immediately removed to federal court due to a federal officer engaging in lawful federal activities as an agent of the federal government and it will get thrown out at the federal level even in Minnesota
but even if it did, the only way this case brought and not immediately thrown out is because of politics and not because of questions about the legality of this use of lethal force because it is just cut-and-dried legal use of force in every state in the country and at the federal level especially when you consider you would have to disprove the self-defense claim beyond reasonable doubt
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Every still image I've seen pretty clearly shows a bullet hole in the front windshield. Close to the edge of the front, roughly where state registration tags usually go, but still the front. I'm sure some shots went through the side considering like 4 rounds were fired, but characterizing them all as being shot from the side does not seem fair.
Not an intentional characterization. The first shot indeed went through the front window. It's the subsequent shots that I think will be very difficult to justify as self defense. I know that there is a norm that cops 'mag dump' into suspects, which they then justify with the phrase 'I fired until the threat was eliminated' - which is the legal standard.
Problem is, that justification makes sense if you're talking about a guy who just pulled a gun or charged at you. It makes way less sense if the threat was a car, and you've just dodged out of the way of that car to the extent that subsequent shots then go through the side window. What is the justification for those subsequent shots? The shooter was no longer in danger. I really think those are going to be a major issue for the shooter, legally.
A sequence of 3 shots within a second are not going to be difficult to justify as self-defense. If the first is justified, the next two within a second are going to be justified. No one is required to shoot once and wait a few seconds to see what happened.
I just find it interesting as you're discovering what really happened the different facts don't seem to affect your opinion and instead you just find some other rationale why your initial opinion is still correct.
It’s not about ‘wait and see’, it’s about the fact that he is no longer in front of the vehicle.
To what are you referring?
the fact you didn't know the first shot went through the windshield proving he was in front of the vehicle when he shot 3 times within about a second
and so your motte position was 'sure, sure, maybe the first shot was fine, but what about the 2nd and 3rd shot .33 seconds later which went 6 inches to the right through the side window'
https://youtube.com/watch?v=K9CJY5p0xz4&t=16
He's pivoted more than 90 degrees since the first shot, and has pushed his gun forward almost to the point where it's within the vehicle through the side window -- there's some argument to be made that training/target fixation kicked in so he's not really culpable, but that argument is not "double-tap is standard procedure" nor "nobody could possibly have stopped shooting in such a short time".
the standard in self-defense scenarios is and should be what a reasonable person could believe in the situation; it's not a standard of perfection based on hindsight and 10 different camera angles
when you get to the point where you're (the general you) attempting to criticize/condemn someone because they fired 3 shots in a timeframe of about a second total claiming the shooter should have known and assessed after the first shot and within half a second that the potential threat scenario had completely changed and to not fire a half second later, while they're being hit by a car driving directly by them, we're at the point where I just don't believe they actually believe in self-defense and they're looking for any reason to condemn people when they actually use self-defense as a way to attack self-defense principles themselves and each of these are just arguments as soldiers
no one is required or should be required under the legal standard to judge each shot in a very tight sequence (again, about a second in total) of shots separately because this isn't how humans work because we have brains and muscles which just aren't this fast
the period in which lethal force would be justified is the period in which it's present and imminent and then a period of time after it factually ends to give a real human in the real world time to observe that, analyze it, and respond to it; I really struggle to believe people making these arguments have successfully thought about putting themselves in this scenario, think about just how quick 1 second is, and think to themselves, 'yeah sure I would have fired the first shot and it's justified, but I would have known to stop .33 seconds later as I was being hit by a car'
these sorts of arguments just come off to me as being only able to be made by people know they will never be in this scenario and they're using their spot on the sidelines to produce a standard which condemns most others
none of us would withstand such a standard and cowardice and inaction is our only defense, but someone actually does have to be in these situations
and as I wrote in another comment, there is yet another argument the cop would be justified to use lethal force in defense of others on the street from the fleeing felon who had just committed aggravated assault with a deadly weapon which she was still recklessly driving
edit: accidentally posted early and came in too hot and significant edited the above post, apologies
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I did know that.
This is the straw man of my position, yes.
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Particularly if it turns out that the first shot was non-fatal -- which actually seems kind of likely given the location of the hole + quickdraw; he might not have even hit her at all there.
If he doesn't exactly have self-defence for the shots through the window, this would leave him only with defense of others/the public -- which might fly for a normal cop in this situation with a normal (here meaning crazed out of his mind on liquor and drugs) fleeing suspect; preventing a dangerous high-speed chase, heat of the moment, etc.
In this case that seems like kind of a tough row to hoe.
Even with civilian shootings it's usually not necessary to justify each shot in a rapid sequence separately. (Whether the shots were in such a sequence was a point in the Bernhard Goetz case, IIRC)
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No. Once you establish the first shot is reasonable, the other shots within a second are also reasonable. It is a very fluid situation and LEO cannot be expected to assess within less than a second whether the threat has passed once they fire. If it was say 30 seconds later, sure. But asking them to within half a second continue to make these decisions is asking LEO to be superhuman.
Like shaken says, this is normally pretty ironclad because normally they are defending themselves from a guy with a gun etc who is hard to cross-off as a threat -- so continuing to shoot if he drops the gun or something isn't too bad.
This time, the car was clearly past him, and he had to actively turn his body to get the shot -- you could argue about target fixation or something, but based on the video I don't think it's an easy sell to a jury.
Well, yes and no. Again, very limited time. So that helps the LEO.
Second, if you think she was trying to hit you and only avoided causing serious harm because you were able to shimmy a bit out of the way, then the threat isn’t over after she misses you.
Maybe it's not over, (like, she might back up and have another go at you!) but it's no longer immediate.
Where are you going to draw the line on that? He had to pivot quite a bit to get the shot from the side, can he just keep tracking the target and shoot her in the back? It's a Glock, not a machine gun -- when you are no longer under immediate threat, you can just... not pull the trigger anymore.
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A car is a deadly weapon and she hit him with it. The conditions for self defense do not get any more satisfied.
Not really. The standard is reasonable belief of an imminent deadly threat which can only be stopped through deadly force.
The most obvious way in which this was violated is - where was the imminent threat when the shots went through the side window?
I'm not sure about other states, but in Minnesota the law states that lethal force is permitted to resist an offense that you reasonably believe exposes you to death or great bodily harm. Nothing about this requires that the offense can only be stopped by lethal force, it simply permits lethal force under any circumstance where you reasonably believe your life is threatened.
It is absolutely unreasonable to demand a separate legal justification for every individual round fired mere fractions of a second apart, and I'm not aware of anyone who actually tries to hold human beings to that standard. The simple answer is that he stopped firing when he realized the threat was over, which is going to be some measurable amount of time after the threat was actually over because he is a human being and human beings are not capable of instantly processing information and making decisions about it. The law does not make it a felony to have human limitations, that would be stupid.
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not really; there are a maximum of five legal elements of defensive force in any state in the United States and the federal government:
your quick summary has at least 2 errors: one, it can be threat of death or serious/great bodily injury, and two, it is not a requirement the threat can only be stopped with deadly force
the cop was attempting to effectuate a lawful arrest of a woman obviously committing obstruction, the woman accelerates the suv which you can tell with the spinning tires turned towards the cop, hitting or about to hit someone with a car is a deadly force threat, cops do not have a duty to avoid but even if this was a regular person they could not retreat from an accelerating vehicle a few feet away from them in complete safety, and a person in that cop's circumstance could have both a subjective and objectively reasonable belief he's about to be run over
every single element is pretty cut-and-dried satisfied in this scenario and remember a prosecutor would need to disprove the above beyond reasonable doubt
Technically yes, in practice this is the same thing.
I believe this is incorrect; you may not use lethal force to stop a threat if it is obvious a non lethal force would suffice.
Although neither of these points seem relevant to this specific example. The problem the shooter will have, is that the moment he is alongside the car there is no longer any threat of any kind of injury to himself, yet he keeps firing. This will not be impossible to overcome but his defence would have their work cut out for them.
This is somewhat undermined by the fact that he actually did retreat in complete safety.
For the front shot, sure. That’s a plausible defence. Once the cop is alongside the car, however, the idea that he would be afraid of “slipping on the ice” or being “dragged under the vehicle” and that the only remedy to that threat is to keep firing shots into the driver is weak as hell. Good luck convincing a jury that a reasonable person would feel the same way. No, if he ever does find himself in court over this, the best bet to defend against those shots would be either ‘defence of others’ or ‘heat of the moment’, neither of which is great. I sure as shit wouldn’t want to be facing down a jury in his shoes.
no, they're not "practically" the same thing as one is not always the other
based on what? your legal experience? your sleuthing on google? vibes?
and that's not what you wrote, you wrote "which can only be stopped through deadly force"
no, he will not have a problem making the defense that 3 shots over 1 second which started in front of the car when he was struck by the accelerating car are also justified
and again, a person can use deadly self-defense force in defense of others which would also fit this scenario because a fleeing felon who just committed aggravated assault with a deadly weapon which she was still driving is an imminent deadly threat to others, including other law enforcement
he got hit by the car so he was, in fact, not able to retreat in complete safety which is the standard
and even if he wasn't hit by the car, the after-the-fact knowledge he retreated without being injured doesn't mean it wasn't reasonable for him to think he could not retreat in complete safety when he 3 feet in front of an accelerating vehicle
and again, law enforcement has special carveouts for any duty to retreat even in the 11 states which have this duty (mainly, they de facto do not have one) because otherwise law enforcement couldn't enforce laws without wholly giving up their right to lawful self-defense
that's not the standard; the standard is the jury must have zero reasonable doubt the above is wrong
There is no point arguing with you about nitpicks that aren't even relevant to this case. So reducing what you have said to just the relevant parts:
Ok, why?
A jury would have to be convinced that this was a reasonable belief in this specific circumstance. If I were a juror, you could perhaps convince me of this, but it wouldn't be easy.
OMG is he ok?
less facetiously, once he was alongside the vehicle, and had successfully retreated, and was no longer in danger, he continued to fire. These shots will require justification. Like, I'm not even arguing the first shot right now. I'm willing to accept, for the sake of argument, that that was legitimate. But you don't get to shoot someone because you have been hit - that isn't how self defense works. It's about imminent threats, not threats that have passed. the Drejka case is a good example of this.
Juries reject self defense all the time.
We are talking about a time frame of 1 second. It takes a certain amount of time for a human to take inputs from all of their senses, process it, make a decision, and then use their muscles to act out that decision. That loop does not happen instantly and it takes more time than the split seconds that elapse between firing rounds from a gun. This is why it's reasonable for a self-defender to fire more rounds from their gun even after the point you can identify, with the benefit of hindsight and the comfort of your computer screen, that they don't need to fire any more rounds. What would be unreasonable for example is if he waited 30 seconds and then fired more rounds without clear justification, but that is not what happened here.
They tend not to if they recognize that people aren't superhumans who react to changing stimuli lightning-quick in less than 1 second.
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